


Making A Name

by wordbending



Series: Alphys Appreciation Week [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alphys-Centric, Canon Trans Character, Friendship, Gen, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 12:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18315329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbending/pseuds/wordbending
Summary: Alphys has a plan to build a new body for her best friend, a small pink ghost in Waterfall.But, as she knows very well, there's a lot that goes into taking on a new form, and most of all, making a name for yourself.





	Making A Name

**Author's Note:**

> For Day One of [Alphys Appreciation Week](alphys-appreciation.tumblr.com), an event I'm running on Tumblr. This prompt is: Alphys' friendship with Mettaton!

“Um.”

“Oh, and I simply must have long, slender legs. You understand, of course. No truly gorgeous idol is complete without them!”

_“Um.”_

“And they must end in these knee-high pink boots… with high heels! Like Zara Larrson. Or Pixie Lott! Do you know who they are? I suppose they aren’t as popular as they used to be, but there’s no accounting for taste…”

“ _Um!”_

The pink ghost looks down from where he’s floating back and forth across his room, down at Alphys, who had stopped sketching into her sketchbook. The drawn torso of the robot body she was designing sat on the page, its latest of many, many revisions still incomplete.

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I just got excited,” says the ghost, floating over to her and wringing his stubby limbs as if they were hands.

Alphys smiles at him. “D-don’t worry. It’s f-f-fine. I just… I really… I needed to ask you something.”

“Anything, sweetheart. Fire away.”

Alphys looks firmly into the pink ghost’s uncovered eye. “What do you want to be _called?”_

For a long moment, the pink ghost looks stunned, the eye not covered by his “bangs” widening and his mouth opening to an “O” shape. He raises a limb in front of his mouth, and Alphys swears she sees a blush rise to what passes for his cheeks.

“Called?” he repeats, quietly.

“I… I can’t call you…” Alphys says, before trailing off. She knows it’s rude to refer to him by _that_ name, even if it’s the only name she knows him by. “You know _._ ”

The pink ghost looks touched by her concern.

So Alphys immediately says something she immediately regrets, because she always does. “I-I mean, what if… what if King Asgore f-finds out? We’d… we’d be in _big_ trouble.”

The pink ghost no longer looks touched. He crosses his... arms. “Looking out for your own best interests, I see.”

“No, no!” Alphys shouts, because she knows she said the wrong thing and that if she loses this friendship, she’s going to lose one of the only ones she’s got. “I mean, there… there is that, but… there’s another reason.”

The pink ghost looks curious - she imagines he’d raise an eyebrow if he had one to raise. “Oh?”

Alphys blushes, burying her face in her claws and rubbing at her forehead. “It’s… it’s embarrassing.”

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, sweetheart. What are friends for if not divulging one’s secrets?”

Right, Alphys thinks. Right. She _is_ his friend. They’ve become really close over the past months - surely this isn’t really that embarrassing? She has a feeling it’s not even that much of a secret - it’s hard to bury your past in the cramped Underground.

“You… you know,” she says slowly, not daring to look at the ghost. “You know I wasn’t always Alphys, right?” She doesn’t even look to see the ghost’s reaction. She just keeps talking. “It took me… a long, long time to figure out what I was. _Who_ I was. A really long time. But I knew one thing, right from the start.”

She waits for the ghost to respond this time, but the ghost says nothing.

“That I wanted my new name to be Alphys.”

She looks firmly up at the pink ghost, who looks completely (and rarely) unsure of how to react.

“You… you deserve that too. You deserve your own name.”

“Mettaton,” says the ghost.

Alphys blinks once before realization kicks in. She smiles. “That’s what you want? Mettaton?”

Mettaton smiles back warmly. “Of course, darling.” Mettaton spreads his arms out as if taking in a gigantic crowd. “Imagine: Mettaton, the greatest idol the world has ever seen. Mettaton, star to monster and human alike! Mettaton, fashion icon to both beauties and gentlebeauties! It has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”

Alphys nods. “Y-yeah. It does. I like it.”

She looks down at her sketchbook. Slowly, in the neatest handwriting she can muster (which isn’t very), she takes a pen and writes “METTATON” at the top of it.

“N-now, Mettaton, what were you… what were you saying about the legs?”

* * *

When Alphys builds Mettaton’s first body, it malfunctions. Its limbs seize up and it falls to the floor, unconscious, and Alphys has to spend another week repairing it.

So they have to settle on a temporary body for Alphys’ presentation to become Royal Scientist. A square, boxy body on a single wheel that Mettaton settles into like a second skin, but one that she can tell doesn’t _really_ satisfy his wants. It’s only temporary, she reminds him over and over again. He’ll have his real body soon.

But then she becomes the royal scientist, and the weeks become months, and the months become a year. He keeps demanding that she simply flip his switch already, and she keeps insisting that it’s not safe yet.

She’s being a coward, as always. Even if it wasn’t perfectly safe, and she’s worked on enough that she knows it is, she could at least build it to be. She just doesn’t want to lose one of the only friends she has. She just doesn’t want to admit that she’s a fraud, just using Mettaton for her own ends.

Because that’s the truth, isn’t it?

* * *

“So… so…” says Mettaton. Alphys doesn’t think she’s ever heard him so nervous before. Or, maybe, excited. It’s hard to tell. “My new body… it’s complete?”

“That’s what… that’s what I want to t-test. This is j-just a test! T-that’s all.”

Mettaton looks downcast, or as downcast as a rectangle with a faceplate can look. But he instantly hides it under a barrage of cheerfulness. “Wonderful, sweetheart! Let’s not tary a moment longer!”

“No t-tarying here,” she mutters before walking behind Mettaton and flipping the giant switch on his backside. Immediately, all the lights in her lab dim into darkness, two spotlights mysteriously generate out of… somewhere (she didn’t put that in the blueprints), and fog fills the room.

“OHHHHHHHH YESSSSSSSS~” says a very loud, deep voice, and from out of the fog emerges Mettaton in a full, humanoid body.

“Absolutely BEAUTIFUL!” he says, smiling - _smiling!_ \- at her. He keeps striking poses at her, changing his expression with each new one, looking so much like some kind of big-name celebrity posing for a shoot that Alphys can’t help but blush. “What do you think, darling?”

“It’s perfect,” she says, smiling back.

“It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of,” he says, wiping an oily tear from his eye. She has no time to react before Mettaton, on his very long legs, abruptly closes the distance between them and wraps her in a hug. “Thank you so, so much.”

Alphys gently reaches up and hugs him back. “It was… it was no problem at all, Mettaton. Thank you.”

“For what, dear?”

“For being my friend.”

Alphys jumps as a loud barrage of pre-recorded “aww”s play from out of nowhere.

“My apologies, sweetheart. I think that’s automatic.”

“How is it I programmed your b-body and I still don’t know what it does?” Alphys says dryly.

But Mettaton does not respond.

She releases Mettaton’s grip from her and he abruptly falls to the floor.

Darn it. She has to work on that battery.

* * *

Mettaton was already too busy to see her, but then he becomes even busier. His fame seems like it’s growing exponentially, and the more he focuses on it - on his TV channel, on his hotel, on his brand - the less time he has for Alphys.

But he sends her something. A poster. Written on the back is the words, in perfect handwriting, “Thank you for making my dreams come true.”

She puts it up on the wall of her lab… but she doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Every time she looks at it, she feels as if it’s a letter of resignation, of a sort. A salutation to their friendship.

Because, now that she’s made his dreams come true, what use does he have for her anymore?

* * *

The next time Mettaton’s new body is tested, it’s not her that turns it on, but a human. And Mettaton ends up destroying nearly the entire thing trying to kill them.

And Alphys feels nothing but guilt. Every bit of his actions, everything he’s doing, is all her fault.

* * *

The moment she gets back to her lab, Alphys puts Mettaton on her workbench, plugs him into an outlet, and turns him back on. Or, rather, she turns Mettaton’s disembodied torso back on. She doesn’t have spare arms or legs.

Mettaton opens his eyes and stares at her, following her movements. It’s rather unnerving, like some kind of broken life-sized animatronic.

At least he looks irritated at her, based on his narrowed eyes and frown. That’s… reassuring, sort of.

“I… I’m sorry,” Alphys says the instant he looks at her. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, Alphys, sweetheart,” sighs Mettaton. “You’re going to have to do better than _that.”_

 _“_ I am sorry!” she says, desperation creeping into her voice. “I… messed up. I really, really m-messed up, and I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for _what?”_ says Mettaton. “Please, spare no detail.”

Alphys swallows. Right. Right. This has to be a real apology. She has to tell him everything.

“I used you,” she says, trying not to let the guilt overwhelm her voice, trying not to stutter too badly. “I wanted to become the Royal Scientist, and I u-used you as a way to do it. I tricked King A-Asgore, using you. And then I _k-kept_ using you. We became friends, real friends, and I… didn’t want to lose that. So I hid that… that I could have completed your body all along.”

“Oh, Alphys,” says Mettaton bitterly. She imagines he’d cross his arms if he still had any. “That was my _dream._ Do you understand what that body meant to me?”

“I know… I know… but you were so busy and…” Alphys stops herself. She’s making excuses. “I’m sorry. That’s no excuse. I s-shouldn’t have used you like that.”

“And?” Mettaton says, his mouth set in a frown.

It takes a moment to realize what Mettaton means, but she soon gets the idea. “And I’m s-sorry I used you to try to become friends with the human. I just wanted to impress them, but… I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t fair of me. And it r-r-risked your life… if you had d-died, I d-don’t know what I would have done.”

“Sounds like you did a whole lot you regret, huh, darling?” says Mettaton, smiling rather smugly.

Alphys just nods. “Yes. Yes, I did.” She wrings her claws together, staring up at Mettaton from his position on her workbench. “I know… I know I could never apologize enough for taking advantage of you like this. If you don’t forgive me, I… I understand. If you don’t want to be friends again… that’s OK.”

She doesn’t know, in reality, how she’ll handle if Mettaton doesn’t want to be friends anymore, if he doesn’t forgive her. She wonders if she’ll ever able to forgive _herself._

“Alphys,” says Mettaton. Alphys swears he looks… guilty. “I… have regrets of my own.”

Alphys looks up into Mettaton’s eyes. “You do?”

“Of course, darling. I took advantage of _you_ ,” he says, frowning. “To be a star. To pass through my barrier myself, to become a celebrity among humans. I ruined your plan to become friends with that human. I tried to kill them. And I did it all for selfish, foolish reasons.”

Alphys blinks. She wasn’t expecting Mettaton to apologize to _her._ But everything he’s just said is completely true - he has things to apologize for as much as she does.

“T-t-thank you,” she says, unsure of what else to say.

“Sweetheart, it’s… not going to be easy,” Mettaton says. “But I… I do hope this isn’t the end of our friendship. I hope you can forgive me.”

“You want…” Alphys says, barely able to believe what she’s hearing. “You want to be friends?”

“Living in regret is _so_ last season,” Mettaton says. “What’s the point of fretting about our past mistakes? We have to embrace the _now._ ”

Alphys feels tears prick at her eyes. She beams at Mettaton, and, without thinking about it, reaches up and hugs his waist.

“I would hug you back, but… no arms,” Mettaton says, smirking.

Alphys laughs. “You can h-hug me when I’ve f-fixed your body.”

“That sounds fabulous, darling.”

* * *

 

Soon after Mettaton’s body is fixed and the Underground is freed, Mettaton sends a postcard to her lab. It’s a selfie of himself in front of a mansion, winking at the camera. It says, in bright pink, glittery letters, “WISH YOU WERE HERE!”

On the back, it says, “Thank you for being my friend - Mettaton.”

Alphys frames the postcard, puts it next to the poster, and looks at it with what might even be pride.


End file.
